Observations focused on the problems of an underdeveloped country, Venezuela, with some serendipity about the world (orchids, techs, science, investments, politics) at large. A famous Venezuelan, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo, referred to oil as the devil's excrement. For countries, easy wealth appears indeed to be the sure path to failure. Venezuela might be a clear example of that.

Archive for August 26th, 2008

Act One: Tal
Cual reports on August 19th. that the Government will submit a
new Telecommunications Law to the National Assembly.The draft cited by Tal Cual gives Hugo Chavez the power to
suspend all “telecommunications transmissions”, whenever the stability of the
Nation is at risk. This is contained in Article 11, of the “Final Dispositions”
of the draft.

Act Two: Deputy Manuel Villalba of Chavez’ PSUV party and to
top it all off, President of the Media committee of the Venezuelan National
Assembly, appears in
Globovision and denies not only the content, but even the existence of such
a draft.Using the Chavista
language that we have grown accustomed to he says that those that promote such
news items like El Universal, El Nacional and Tal Cual “are trying to destabilize
the country, playing with fear and are disrespecting the intelligence of the
Venezuelan people”

But then there is the last and conclusive act:

Act Three: Minister of Telecommunications Socorro Hernandez
on the TV channel used to promote only Chavez paid by the taxpayers VTV, comes on and says that
the Bill does indeed exist and it will be submitted to the National assembly,
but “the versions that have circulated around (in the press) are drafts, but
are not the definitive version…”

Thus, Minister Hernandez is admitting that the drafts of the
Bill have contained articles allowing the President to cut off all information
to the Venezuelan population whenever he feels like it, i.e. allowing total
censorship.

And here comes the hilarious part, the Minister says: “ the
law will be submitted to public consultation and I don’t think there are reasons for people to be anxious”

I guess the poor Minister must have been on vacation or at
the Olympics and missed the 26 Bills approved by her almighty boss, without consultation
and allowing unconstitutional actions as well as laws that contain articles rejected by the Venezuelan people in a
democratic referendum in December 2007.

But it is sufficient to see how the matter has been handled
with the 26 Bills, the secrecy with which it has been handled, the President of
the relevant committee of the National Assembly did not know about it, to be
not anxious, but extremely anxious about the future of Venezuela’s
telecommunications as well as its democracy democracy.

Because when Governments lie, hide information and use all
forms of deceit it is because they are trying something that you know is either
illegal or violates international treaties. In the case of the Chavez Government
we have seen this over and over again.

These people should realize that one day, they will have to
pay for their crimes. Or steal a lot of money to live in exile.

Wow! It
was only last Friday that Minister of Finance Ali Rodriguez said, with that
voice of his which is moderate and low, far from being strident or radical:
“The government doesn’t have any plans to nationalize more companies”.

If you believed it, you
probably just forgot that this is a revolution with random thoughts and no
coordination.

Because it only took like
24 hours before the Venezuelan National Assembly showed that one hand of the
Government has no clue as to what the other is doing, when they announced the
passing of a Bill in the next few days to nationalize the distribution of
gasoline in the country. The Bill calls for the nationalization of the
wholesale distribution and transportation of gasoline and the transfer of all
gas stations under concession to communal councils. Thus, it seems as if both
wholesale and retail will be nationalized.

The law establishes a
period of sixty days for those affected to negotiate with the Government. You
know what that means, you have sixty days to accept what the Government offers
you or else. Because most of those 60 day terms have been used by the
Venezuelan Government to confiscate private property from its position of
strength. You can fight, but in the absence of an independent legal system, you
have little recourse but to accept the offer and leave.

And it will be interesting
to see what use these untested communal councils give to both the gas stations
and the proceeds from its sale. If it is anything like the confiscation of rice
last week from a private supermarket, then we know that a new and imaginative
source of corruption for the robolution has just been invented.